Patient transporting equipment such as ambulance cots, are available in a wide range of designs and models. Most, however are not adjustable in height and those that are are restricted to a specific number of heights to which they can be set. The setting of such heights usually involves a series of operations involving manipulating pins and/or levers, and is time consuming and, in many cases, awkward.
A further disadvantage of existing ambulance cots is that they are not readily adaptable to loading into different makes or models of ambulances which vary from one to another in the heights of their loading platforms. To accommodate differing heights, the cot must usually either be tilted or, if adaptable to a range of specific heights, must be readjusted in height with locating pins to correspond with the particular height of the ambulance. More often than not, such height adjustment cannot be sufficiently fine tuned with the result that the cot must still be tilted to some degree to enable loading. Such operations are not only time consuming and inconvenient to the patient, but also place strains on the ambulance attendant.
A still further disadvantage of existing ambulance cots is that although they may be designed to suit a particular height of ambulance loading platform, they usually cannot readily adapt to the gradual changes in height which commonly occur over time as the ambulance ages. This will result in increasing strain being placed on the ambulance attendant as he is forced to take the weight of the cot as it is being loaded or unloaded.